And you must have Windows 2000 or XP as well, not sure if they have a mac level. This is kinda like renting a movie - you have 30 days in which to view it but once you start viewing it you have 24 hours to watch it. Typical cost is $3.99, for those who may not have the movie on DVD this might be a nice thing to download and watch it in public places - everyone knows people love to see what others are watching this way maybe you can make a few converts and add to the DVD sales. :)

It also appears to be good only in the U.S. I was redirected to a Canadian company that seems to work like Netflix and offered no downloading. On the good side, the availability of Serenity was poor - there is a waiting list for it.

Hopefully this will expose the outstanding merits of the movie to more and more people and thus help to increase sales. I also expect that Universal gets a cut of the money made off of this download. More money going into the 'verse' is a good thing.

On a related note, I am still not seeing any widescreen copies of Serenity in the stores. With sales numbers supposedly decreasing, I would expect to see more copies of the movie sitting on store shelves and I am not seeing them......something seems odd about that to me. Anyone else seeing this too?

I'm afraid it will be some DRM using WMV to enforce that whole 24h/30days stuff, which would also mean that you are forced to use a recent Windows Media Player (unless there are other players by now that support that whole DRM annoyance). Another program I wouldn't even want to touch with a very long stick.

Apart from that, how much does it cost to rent a movie over there? Unless this is drastically cheaper than renting a DVD the old fashioned way I can only hope their whole scheme blows up in their faces for being a) incompetent MS *** and b) thinking that with the whole hassle of downloading 1.4GB(!), DRM and severe playing limitations and no DVD extras, people will still go and be ripped off just because "downloading is the latest thing and sooo much cooler than renting".

On a related note, I am still not seeing any widescreen copies of Serenity in the stores...

Really? Where are you?
If you're not seeing any Widescreen versions, maybe people are snatchin' 'em all up and leaving the Fullscreens to the people who either need that format...or don't know any better.
; )